The present invention broadly relates to a printed product coil or wound product package and, more specifically, pertains to a new and improved construction of a wound product package containing a winding core.
Generally speaking, the wound product package of the present invention comprises a cylindrical winding core, printed products wound-up upon the cylindrical winding core and a winding band or partitioning strap maintained under tension and wound in between the winding layers.
As known from the German Pat. No. 3,123,888 or the corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 4,438,618, such printed product coils or wound product packages are fabricated by winding up upon a winding core the printed products usually arriving in imbricated formation conjointly with a winding band maintained under tension. After completion, these product coils are usually transported to an intermediate storage area from which they are later delivered to a further processing station at which the printed products are again unwound from the winding core. The need therefore exists of being able to manipulate the product coils in the simplest possible manner and to spatially store them economically.
It is known from the Swiss Pat. No. 559,691 to employ a hollow cylindrical winding core with discoidal side flanges which are constructed as supporting and rolling rims for transporting the coil. These side flanges further serve to laterally support the wound-up printed products. Considerable space is required for storing such printed product coils due to these side flanges not only in height and width, but also in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the winding core, since the dimension of the coil in the axial direction of the winding core is greater than the width of the wound-up printed products.
It is also proposed in the above-mentioned Swiss Pat. No. 559,691 to employ hollow cylindrical winding cores which comprise a side flange on only one end and which are further provided with a stub shaft protruding beyond the side flange. A plurality of wound or unwound winding cores can be placed in flush contact due to this stub shaft and can be stored with the longitudinal axis extending either in vertical or horizontal direction. This known solution, too, has the disadvantage that when storing the product coil, relatively much space is required. Furthermore, the juxtaposition and separation of the individual product coils renders suitable equipment necessary, not least because of the weight.